Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Estimated by the American Cancer Society, approximately 1.2 million new cancer cases will be diagnosted and more than half a million Americans are expected to die from cancer this year. The types of cancer treatments usually include immunotherapy, surgery, radiation, hormones, and chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy, despite being a powerful cancer treatment, especially for inoperable or metastatic forms, does suffer from a few problems. The most prominent problem is the low specificity of the anticancer agents. That is, most anticancer agents do not distinguish normal cells from cancer cells to an appreciable level. Many anticancer agents are also not very hydrophilic, thus creating solubility problem in serum.